40 Tips for christian types: #1 Major in Love. When Jesus is asked what the greatest command is [Matthew 22] He gives a sneaky two-parter answer which is basically: Love God with everything and love your neighbour as yourself. If this was the most important thing to Jesus, it should be to us. What i love about the Matthew passage is the little p.s. after Jesus gives the command which says, 'All the Law [...]
It's time for a new series of Tips. #40TipsForChristFollowers What started very successfully as 40 tips for white people who are asking the question, 'But what can I do?' moved into a series on 40 Tips for married people hoping to do marriage better. A lot of people seemed to find a lot of the suggestions helpful and it wasn't so much about agreeing with all 40 tips in each case as it was [...]
My dream is that i will one day live in a nation where people will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. Sound familiar? i am busy reading 'The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr.' and so that has been influencing me quite a bit. But that really is my heart. And to that end i don't want white people to feel guilty or unincluded or [...]
This past week has been tough. Sitting with a R40 000 bill over our heads [alongside the more manageable R12000 to fix our car] for driving into a BMW is not to be found on the list of 'Ten Ways to De-Stress your life'. But, we are surrounded by people who know and love us and there is no way conceivable to us that tbV [the beautiful Val] and i are going to find ourselves [...]
i have wanted to read some Martin Luther King, Jr. for the longest time. So when tbV gave me 'The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr. edited by Clayborn Carson' as part of our Christmas book exchange i was super stoked. My serious journey towards becoming conscientised [an ongoing work, by the way] began largely in America when i lived there for three years and i saw [and still see] so much overlap between the [...]
What is my word for 2019, you ask? Every year i try to have a word or phrase to focus on and give me some direction and purpose for the year ahead. Last year's word was Bridge-Building, with a sub-description of 'Stepping Towards' - finding ways to pull people together, to unite, to help people engage, to listen more, to create spaces where this can happen and to be a catalyst any way i can. The [...]
For me, Christmas is a reminder that Love came down. Love got its hands dirty. Love got involved. Love interrupted the normal flow of things. Love reached out specifically to all of those that society, culture, religion and government pushed to the sides. Love allowed itself to be interrupted while on mission. Love called out injustice. Love refused to accept the status quo. Love turned over tables in the face of greed and extortion. Love [...]
What are you doing Friday night? Going to a workshop that interrogates whiteness. Wait, what? And I am paying for it. Those words might seem like they come out of an SNL sketch if South Africa had an SNL type show. But we don't. And it was the brave decision of eight white people to respond to an invitation that my friend and colleague Megan Furniss put out on Facebook: I am Megan Furniss, a [...]
Marriage Tip #21 Tend towards the cleaner one. Now this is not to much specifically a marriage tip as it is a people-who-live-in-the-same-space tip and i probably observed this more living in community with tbV and others in Philly than with just me and Val. But it can be huge. The person who hates breadcrumbs on the counter is MUCH MORE emotionally invested than the person who doesn't care [or notice] breadcrumbs on the counter. [...]
Last night was the big combined end of year poker game for a group of mates i had been playing poker with once a month. Thirty plus people and a long evening of challenging competition planned. In a nutshell, i had all of the best cards but got completely bad beat three times and ended up being second person out with Val still representing and looking set to continue for a good while. She suggested I [...]
